


meaning, fortunate

by yrbeecharmer



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (Obviously), Agoraphobia, Anxiety Disorder, Augments being friends, Cardassian Border Wars, Characters Watching James Bond Movies, Coming of Age, Dominion War (Star Trek), Ethics, Felix hates transporters because of anxiety, Friendship, Gen, Genetic Engineering, History Nerd Julian Bashir, Holodecks/Holosuites, Recovery, Starfleet cadets being Starfleet cadets, bisexual dumbass Julian Bashir, holoprogramming as future sociology, life on 24th century earth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26281903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yrbeecharmer/pseuds/yrbeecharmer
Summary: There is one person in the universe who understands Felix, and for a long time, Felix is the only person who understands him. They're the only people who are allowed to. Anyone else would be too dangerous.or,The 15-year enmeshment of a doctor who wants to be anywhere but Earth and a holoprogrammer too anxious to go anywhere else.
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Felix, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why do you like the twentieth century so much?” Jules asked. “You draw stuff from it all the time.”
> 
> “I dunno. It’s just interesting.” Adam shrugged. “That’s when Terrans first started exploring space, you know? And now here we are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on this off and on for so long that I no longer remember when this concept of Felix first appeared in my head. He has absolutely nothing to do with whatever version of the character appears in the EU novels, and is pretty much completely my own invention based on a bunch of extrapolated headcanons.
> 
> I hope other people like him as much as I do.  
> 

001\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2348 

LOCATION: Adigeon Prime 

  


Adam swung down so he bent over the side of his bunk, regarding the new kid upside-down. Today in testing his strength and agility had charted north of the 99th percentile for a Terran twice his age, so it was easy to hang here and look. “Hi there,” he said. 

“Hi,” said the child, who was probably the tiniest Terran Adam had seen since the last time he saw his sister—she had been a baby when their parents brought him here, dark-skinned and black-haired and squishy. This tiny Terran didn’t look much like her: they were stick-thin and had light brown skin, a great shock of brown hair, and enormous eyes behind round glasses so thick Adam couldn’t be sure of their color. Adam hadn’t seen a person with glasses in a very long time. 

The child wouldn’t make eye contact, just curled up tighter against the wall and looked at their tiny hands, twisting their fingers together. Adam would guess they were about five—a year or two Adam’s junior. 

“You’re not an alien,” they said. They were Terran, but they weren’t speaking Portuguese or Spanish or even English—Adam could hear the faint electric hum of the universal translator whirring behind the words. His hearing had been the main focus last month, and this was an unfortunate, though hardly problematic, side effect. The first unfortunate side effect he had noticed from any treatment, actually. 

“We’re all aliens here,” said Adam. “But you’re right. I’m a Terran just like you. That’s why we’re in the Terran dorm.” The child said nothing, so. “I’m Adam,” he prompted. Still nothing. He moved from prompting to prodding. “What’s your name?” 

“Jules.” The UT didn’t hum. That might have been because it was a proper noun, or it might have been because it was an English name. Probably proper noun—personal identification was something that wasn’t generally translated in text, so why would it be out loud? Adam was still working on that hypothesis. It was hard to know for sure when he spent most of his time outside the lab around Terrans. The name itself also told him nothing about the child’s gender. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Jules,” said Adam. “Are you a boy or a girl? Or something else?” 

“A boy,” said Jules, though he didn’t sound one hundred percent certain. That might have just been nerves. 

“Where are you from?” 

“Earth.” 

“Yeah, but where on Earth?” 

“I dunno.” 

“Okay. How old are you? I’m seven years and a hundred and ninety-four days.” 

“I dunno,” Jules mumbled, and hid his head behind his arms. That was—disheartening, that was a word Adam had learned twenty-six days ago from his reading. His reading comprehension had reached senior secondary level as of last week. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “You will soon!” 

Not even a twitch of a muscle to indicate Jules had heard him. Adam could take a hint. His social function had never been in much doubt, as far as he could tell. 

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Jules! Welcome to the genius factory!” That was what Jack had called it, when he was here. Adam missed Jack. Jack was twelve, and Jack was funny. Sure, he had hurt Leyla and Kai before they took him away, but he had never scared Adam. 

The next time he looked at Jules, Jules was up again, but back to staring at his fingers, twisting and twining together. 

Two days went by, and on the third Jules climbed up to sit on Adam’s bunk and watch him draw. Adam didn’t stop him: he was curious, and maybe Jules would be able to tell him more about himself now that his treatments had started. 

“That’s neat,” said Jules. He looked far more alert and curious than he had just seventy-two hours ago. The glasses were gone. 

“Thanks.” Adam set aside his stylus and held the PADD-2 back to look at his work. The tiger was still mostly a sketch, only the face beginning to fill in with color and detail. 

“It looks really good. Like a real picture, like a grown-up could draw.” 

“Thank you,” said Adam, pleased. The doctors said his visual and hand-eye coordination capacities were well into the 99th percentile now, so that made sense. 

“What is it?” Jules asked. 

“It’s a Terran tiger,” said Adam. “They went extinct in the twenty-first century, but they were orange and black and bigger than a human.” 

“It looks like a cat?” said Jules. Ostensibly a statement, it came out sounding like a question, so Adam nodded. 

“Yep. It was a species of felinid, so, a very big cat.” Jules looked thoroughly delighted. 

“I can tell now!” 

“Tell what? Animals apart?” 

“Yes!” 

“Couldn’t you before?” Adam asked. Jules shook his head. 

“No. Mum was so unhappy about it, and that’s why I’m here. But now I can tell, so maybe now I can go home!” He smiled happily. Adam looked down at his tiger, not wanting to ruin Jules’ day by pointing out that the cat thing was probably just one symptom of a much larger problem that even the doctors here couldn’t possibly have fixed in just three days. 

“What kind of treatments have you had?” he asked. Jules frowned slightly, and held up a hand to count on his fingers. Evidently not enough, Adam thought. 

“They made me smarter,” said Jules, tapping his left forefinger. “I heard Doctor Dejizak telling Mum my IQ is up by ten already. That’s good, right?” 

“Yes,” said Adam. Not enough, but good. 

“Did they make you smarter, too?” 

“Yeah.” Adam suspected he had been smarter at baseline than Jules, but it had been long enough that he had no way to remember. At any rate, his reading comprehension had advanced to university level as of yesterday, and Teacher Emmons thought he was ready to start the advanced algebra module. 

“That’s awesome,” said Jules, and tapped his middle finger. “They made me bigger, too. Can you tell?” Adam looked at him. He wasn’t any less skinny, but he might have grown a little height-wise, so Adam nodded. Jules looked pleased with himself. 

“It seems like they made you better at interaction, too.” 

“I feel less shy.” Jules nodded. “You’re not so scary anymore. That’s why I came and said hi. Doctor Dejizak said I should try talking to the other kids.” 

“Well, then, hi,” said Adam. They sat quietly for a couple of minutes, Adam shading the tiger’s paw, Jules watching him. “What language are you speaking?” Adam asked. 

“Arabic,” said Jules, cocking his head to one side in confusion. “Aren’t you?” 

“No,” said Adam, “I’m speaking English. The UT just translates.” 

“The what?” 

“The universal translator.” Adam looked at him, surprised. “Do you not know about the universal translator?” He pointed at the little module where the light blinked faintly in the ceiling panels and the electronics hummed. 

“No!” said Jules, open-mouthed, looking around at the room. “Where is it? I don’t see anything.” 

“I guess they haven’t fixed your vision yet,” said Adam. The giant glasses were gone, but that could just mean Jules had been brought up to average. Jules frowned. 

“I guess not.” 

“Jules isn’t an Arabic name.” 

“No,” said Jules. “My name is Julian _actually._ ” 

“But that’s not an Arabic name either.” 

“It’s not?” 

“No, it comes from the Romance languages. It might be French, or English?” If not, he would have pronounced it differently. 

“Oh! Well, my dad is English. His name is Richard.” 

“So do you speak English?” said Adam, switching. 

“Yeah,” said Jules, mirroring him, and Adam relaxed infinitesimally as the UT stopped humming. “I can’t always tell the difference, though,” he added. “Is that bad?” 

“I dunno.” Adam lined a thin strip of white over the tiger’s claw, reflective, a technique he had figured out this week. “Maybe it’ll get easier as your brain gets better.” 

“Maybe,” said Jules. He didn’t sound like he had a lot of faith in the treatments yet. He would. 

  


002\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2349 

LOCATION: Adigeon Prime 

  


“That’s pretty,” said Jules, sprawled on Adam’s bed, looking at his new picture. “Her clothes look _really_ old-fashioned.” 

“Mid-nineteen-hundreds,” said Adam. “It’s based on a picture of Jackie Kennedy. She was married to one of the Presidents of the United States.” 

“Oh! Oh!” Jules shot up to sitting, excited. “I know this one! John F. Kennedy, he was assassinated—” that was a bigger word than Adam would have expected for where he was at, but then he had been roping Jules into watching a lot of James Bond movies lately— “in—in—” 

“1963,” Adam supplied. “Yep, that’s the one.” As usual, Jules looked delighted to have gotten something right on the first try. Adam would have thought it would be getting to be normal by now, surely—he had been here for nine weeks now, and his IQ had topped 150 within the first two. 

“Why do you like the twentieth century so much?” Jules asked. “You draw stuff from it all the time.” 

“I dunno. It’s just interesting.” Adam shrugged. “That’s when Terrans first started exploring space, you know? And now here we are.” 

“What’s this planet called?” And there, in Jules’ knowledge, was a gap - they were so hard to predict. 

“Adigeon Prime,” said Adam. “The native culture of this region calls it Garha m’Adtar Lak, though. I learned that from my social studies module.” 

“That’s a long name.” 

“It means ‘land under pink sky,’” said Adam. “You can see why.” He pointed out the small window in their room. Jules nodded. 

“The sky on Earth was blue, right?” he said. Adam nodded, startled. 

“Yeah. Did you forget?” 

“I don’t know.” Jules frowned. “I couldn’t see it cause there was something wrong with my eyes. I just remember my kindergarten teacher trying to teach me colors, and she said the sky was blue, but I didn’t know what she meant.” He held up his hand to look at his sleeve, which was itself blue. “I want to go home, Adam.” 

“But don’t you like it here?” said Adam. “You’re getting so much smarter, and taller and stronger too. And if you weren’t here, you still wouldn’t be able to see blue, right?” 

“But I can’t see the blue _sky,_ ” said Jules. Adam just shook his head, not wanting to argue about it. _He_ liked it here. All he missed about Earth was his family. 

On Adam’s eighth birthday, Doctor Axash replicated a chocolate cake and a candle in the shape of the number eight, and everyone in the Terran dorm clapped as he blew it out. It was fun, but it would have been more fun with his best friend there: Jules had a whole day of testing, so he was shut in the lab while the rest of the kids were here eating cake. 

He was easily distracted, though, when Doctor Axash gave him a wrapped package that held real colored pencils and paper. 

“Wow!” said Adam. “Thank you!” 

“It’s from your parents,” said Doctor Axash. The UT produced an odd whistle when working through his Adigeoni cadence, but in light of the message it didn’t even bother Adam’s ears. “They’re looking forward to seeing you in a month.” 

“My parents are coming in a month?” said Adam. Today’s surprises kept getting better and better. 

“For a preculminatory conference,” Doctor Axash told him. “Do you know what that means, Adam?” Adam didn’t exactly, but he could infer. His macrolinguistic proficiency was in the 98th percentile. 

“Does it mean… I’m almost done?” he asked. Doctor Axash nodded, his gills imitating a Terran smile as well as an Adigeoni could. 

“Your treatment team doesn’t think there’s much more we can do with you, Adam,” he said. “The only way your brain can grow any more is naturally, by placing you back into a free educational environment and letting you bloom.” 

“I’m going home!” Adam announced when Jules dragged himself into their room, looking dead tired, to find him practically dancing across the floor with excitement. It was nighttime now, and outside the sky was deep violet. Jules stopped short. 

“Oh,” he said. “Aren’t you lucky.” And with that, he got in his bed and hid himself under the blanket he still wouldn’t let the nurses take away. Good mood spoiled, Adam stopped his happy dance and climbed up to his own bunk. 

“Maybe after I leave we can be pen pals,” he said. Jules was quiet for a few moments. Then he said, 

“That would be nice.” 

“I could send you my pictures.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’m sure you won’t be here too much longer,” Adam said. “I started a year ago. You’ve already been here for almost six months.” 

“A hundred seventy-one days,” Jules murmured. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll miss you when you go. I don’t have any other friends here.” 

“You’ll have to make some more,” said Adam. “It’ll be fine. People are nice. We’re all in this together. It’s not hard.” 

“It still is for me,” said Jules. It sounded hard for him to say, like he didn’t want to admit it. They were quiet for a while again, then, “Adam?” 

“Hmm?” 

“Will you tell me a story?” 

“Sure. Let me think of one.” Adam closed his eyes. “Okay. Once there was a secret agent…” 

“No, don’t just tell me a James Bond movie again!” 

“No, that’s not what I’m gonna—I mean, yeah, but I’m going to make up my own story for him, okay?” 

“Okay.” Jules sounded content with that, so Adam went on. 

“Once there was a secret agent sent by his government to investigate an arms deal...” 

  


003\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2358 

LOCATION: Tokyo 

  


Felix rubbed at his eyes, blinking as it dawned on him that, outside, the sun had set. He had barely noticed as the room grew dark around him—that was to say, he had _noticed_ —of course he had _noticed_ —he _noticed_ everything, didn’t he? Whether or not it was conscious—until now, when he looked up to find that was why his perfect vision was actually starting to blur. Even his brain wasn’t equipped to take sixteen hours straight of close work in front of a backlit computer screen without a few detrimental effects. 

Maybe it was time to take a compiling break. And—his stomach rumbled—time for a snack. 

“Computer,” he said, “compile program. Save as a separate file.” 

“Working,” the computer intoned, and Felix stood, stretched his arms over his head, and padded over to the replicator on the other side of his retrofitted studio apartment. 

“Coffee, black, four sugars,” was what came out of his mouth on autopilot, even though he had fully intended to ask for food. “And pad thai with shrimp,” he added sheepishly, taking the coffee and sipping it as he waited patiently for the few seconds extra it would take to formulate the more complex dish. He didn’t need to eat as often as a baseline Terran, of course, but when he did he always made sure to give himself a nice shot of protein. 

“Program complete,” the computer announced. Felix downed the rest of his coffee in one efficient gulp and took up his bowl of noodles. 

“Run it,” he said, and stepped into the crowd as it manifested around him: hordes of screaming teenagers, all their attention laser-focused on the four men on stage. None of them noticed Felix standing there watching the Beatles perform with relatively detached interest, eating his pad thai. They wouldn’t: this program wasn’t supposed to be interactive, just exhibitional. 

Interactivity would be his next challenge. He had honed the visual skills necessary to make these things not just believable but beautifully so, and he knew he _had_ the capacity for storytelling and character development—it was just a matter of putting it all together. 

“Incoming message,” the computer announced. Felix swallowed his mouthful of shrimp a little too fast. 

“End program and accept,” he said hoarsely. The concert disappeared, and his mother’s smiling face appeared on the computer screen. Felix took his seat again, setting his bowl on the desk. “Hey, Mom.” 

“Hello, darling! Just checking in—I see you’re keeping well fed.” She nodded at his food. Felix smiled. 

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m more than capable of taking care of myself. Especially since I need a lot less taking care of than the average kid my age,” he added. A little self-deprecation went a long way with baseline Terrans, even those used to him. Even those who had made the choice to make him the way he was in the first place. 

“I know, I know. I’m just a mom—I worry.” Maybe that was where Felix got it, he thought. Maybe it had nothing to do with the treatments after all. His mother propped her head on her hand. The crown of her head was streaked with fine traces of silver in her black hair, Felix noticed—she must be overdue for a round of dye. “How’s school?” 

“School is fine,” said Felix. “It always is. How’s Dani doing?” His little sister had recently started middle school in a new town, and he worried about her sometimes. 

“Just great! The experiential curriculum has been great for her so far.” 

“And she’s making friends?” 

“It sure seems like it. We’re hosting a Halloween party next week.” 

“That’s good.” Felix took another bite of pad thai to fill the awkward silence. 

“And how about you?” his mother asked, at the same time he said, 

“Uh… how’s Florida generally?” And now she gave him a stern look. 

“Felix. Have you been working on managing your anxiety?” 

“No,” said Felix truthfully. “I’ve been working remotely and eating out of the replicator.” He was long beyond the point of pretending otherwise for her. She had wanted a genius for a child; this was what she got. 

“Felix.” His mother sighed. “How do you expect to study other people if you refuse to go near them?” That wasn't it at all, but it didn't matter. 

“Terrans have been studying other Terrans since ancient times, and other races for almost three hundred years. All the information I need for my classes is already extant and readily available.” 

“What about your own research?” she asked. “Fieldwork?” 

“I’ll figure it out. Holoprojectors are wonderful things, Mom.” As if he intended to become a research anthropologist anyway. Eventually, he assumed, she would get over her dream of a perfect child in Starfleet. Eventually. 

“All right.” She sighed. “I just worry about you. You have so much potential, I just don’t want you to wake up someday and feel like you’ve wasted it.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Felix smiled weakly. “Well, it’s been nice to talk, Mom, but I have some homework to do…” 

“All right. I’ll talk to you later, sweetheart.” 

“Bye.” Felix kept up the smile until the screen went blank. Then he let his face do the same, and sighed, running a hand over his eyes. He knew his mother meant well. She just couldn’t understand. 

Felix didn't miss much about Adigeon Prime—not even the pink sky anymore—but the mutual understanding, the camaraderie with the other Terrans all going through the same things together, he longed for that. It was hard to find things in common with people in one’s day-to-day life when one’s most fundamental experiences were shared by only a tiny fraction of the galaxy, and the other—well, statistically significantly, the other _all of them_ —could never know. 

_That_ was the real reason for his isolation. Not his anxiety—that was just what kept him from venturing out into a world full of imperfectly predictable danger. Interpersonal interaction didn't _require_ physical coexistence. It would have been easy to talk to his friends the same way he talked to his family, or even to have them come and visit him here. If they found his living conditions unappealing, he could make this little studio apartment look like any setting they liked. That just would have required him to have friends in the first place, and he did not. 

He had meant it when he told Jules he would write to him. But he had been only eight, and for all his brilliance he was still a child. Bound to the whims of his doctors and parents. Naive enough to think he would be allowed to stay in touch. Instead, when he asked if he could still write to his friend Jules with his real name after his parents informed him they would be changing his name to Felix for his own safety, they looked at him in horror. 

“Adam,” said his father, “you can't be in contact with anyone from the hospital. It's too dangerous. We need to make it as difficult as possible for the Federation to find any links between you and anything connected to genetic augmentation, not create new ones.” 

Felix had understood, and complied, but he'd felt bad. He wondered, sometimes, if Jules had been sad. 

Mostly he wondered where he was now. He would be sixteen. Probably he was a university student now, too, though Felix had to wonder - would Jules’ augmentation have turned in on itself the way Felix’s had? Side effects like his anxiety had to be common, with such an unregulated, unempirical science, if science was even the right word. It might not be. Felix had stopped fooling himself that there was anything traditionally _scientific_ about it years ago, he just hadn’t found a better word yet. It wasn’t exactly art, was it? People’s bodies, their lives, weren’t _art_. What had been done to his brain wasn’t _art,_ though art was the one true gift it had given him. Art was what he did to cope with it. 

Felix leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed until he saw stars, then shoved the empty pad thai bowl aside and pulled up his keyboard. 

_Jules,_ he typed into the universal database, knowing it would be pointless. 4.8 trillion results, several of which appeared to be transliterations from the Althêkhan language of Betazed. Skimming one, he began to understand that in that tongue, _julês_ was the common name for a type of tree studied by botanists for its unique pollination patterns. 

Completely unhelpful. Even Felix’s brain felt like exploding at the thought of sorting through all that trying to find the proverbial needle in the intragalactic haystack. 

_Julian,_ he tried, awash in futility. A Roman emperor. The calendar, of course. A handful of musicians and political figures from more recent centuries. 

Felix narrowed his eyes, thinking. His parents had changed his name. (Felix: meaning, fortunate. He had no idea whether the irony had been intentional.) Jules’ parents probably would have done the same. Probably there was no way of finding him, and probably he shouldn’t be trying to find him anyway. But it had been nearly ten years, and Felix had a different name... 

There might still be extant records from when Jules was first born, Felix thought. He had found his own birth certificate in the United Earth Archives once—and his own death certificate, aged seven. Cause of death: accidental drowning, while on a family camping trip they had staged just far enough away from emergency services for a tragic accident like that to be plausible. His parents had done a very thorough job of erasing his existence and beginning anew. _Probably_ the same was true of Jules, but an original birth certificate, at least, might be a place to start. 

If only he had ever been told his friend’s last name—but then again, he always welcomed a challenge. 

The subroutine he needed was a quick code job, easily tailored to his needs. _Julian,_ he put in; father, _Richard_ ; record language, English and/or Arabic. Birth planet, Earth, Terran years 2340-2341. Felix hit _run._

“Working,” said the computer, even though his command hadn’t been verbal, as if to make sure he was aware with all his senses of what an imposition he was making. And, “two hundred eighty-six records found.” Two hundred eighty-six children named Julian born to fathers named Richard in two years? That seemed a surprisingly large number for a demographic with such narrow parameters. 

“Order alphabetically,” said Felix, not that it mattered. 

“Working. Ordered alphabetically.” 

“Thanks, computer,” said Felix under his breath, and leaned forward to prop his head on his hands and scroll the records, glancing at the identification images that came up associated with the files. Julian Abney, Julian Adcock, Julian Anderson, Julian Appleby, Julian Atbury—how profoundly English—Julian Avery, and Julian Baines were all fair as the goddamn driven snow, but Julian Bashir—Julian Bashir had an Arabic surname, and no identification image. 

IMAGE UNAVAILABLE UNDER UFPCC § 19.03(a). That, when Felix entered it into a subroutine search, was a statute of the UFP Civil Code that allowed parents and guardians to restrict access to certain identifying data on minor children. Felix frowned. “Show me Julian Bashir.” 

Julian Subatoi Bashir had been born on July 1, 2341, in Omdurman, to parents Richard and Amsha. Felix’s faint hope faded as he scrolled down. If it had been Jules, all records should have stopped around 2349, but this included an educational history that ran up to the present. Felix skimmed it halfheartedly. Then his eyes caught on an odd datum— 

Kindergarten, King George VII Primary School, London, entered 2346, perfectly ordinary, was followed by an unusual entry: private homeschooling, entered 2348. Based on the next record—Grade 6, entered at a school in Dubai in 2349—that homeschooling had lasted only a year, and during it Julian Bashir had skipped three years’ worth of primary school. 

_That_ sounded an awful lot like genetic augmentation. 

Felix skipped down past schools on Earth, Vulcan, and Invernia II to look at the most recent school datum: King’s College, Cambridge. Neurology. Not a field Felix would ever have chosen for himself, not after all he had experienced, but then he supposed others might have reacted differently. Perhaps Jules had. 

“Computer,” he said, “show me all publicly available records on Julian Bashir.” 

“Working,” said the computer. In moments a secondary school report appeared, then a news item on a science fair—and that _did_ have an image associated with it, of a group of youths handily identified by the caption listing their names from left to right, not that they needed to be so much. That one of them was at least three years younger than the others was immediately obvious, and thus Felix found himself looking at the adolescent face of a boy who was, unmistakably, his friend Jules. 

“Well.” Felix sat back in his chair and wondered aloud, “What do I do now?” 

“Inquiry unclear,” the computer said helpfully. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a new ao3 I made to get a clean slate with none of the embarrassing stuff I posted when I was younger and more foolish and a worse writer hanging over me. If you know what my old handle is and remember the stuff I wrote there, in the words of the kids on tiktok, no you don't!
> 
> I'm on tumblr also @yrbeecharmer, though tumblr is so dead and I'm so burned out on fandom at this point that it probably won't really be relevant, but, y'know, it's there.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “At least you _remember_ me, or so you claim,” said Julian. “I’m trusting you a good deal more than I probably should, here.”
> 
> “You really don’t remember?” Felix asked curiously. Julian made a face. “Repressed it all, or…?”
> 
> “No idea,” said Julian shortly. “Not sure I _want_ to know. Hardly going to ask. I haven’t spoken to my father in two years, and I only cave to calling my mother on holidays.”
> 
> “Mine calls me of her own accord,” said Felix. “Impossible to avoid.” For the first time, the face Julian made was a little sympathetic.

  


004\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2359 

LOCATION: Tokyo 

  


The meeting was very nearly over before it began. “Hi, Jules,” Felix said when he opened the door, and Jules flinched. 

“Don’t call me that,” he said sharply. “My name is _Julian._ ” Tall and gangly, he would have looked like an entirely normal seventeen-year-old boy, except that he was clearly as coordinated and comfortable in his own body as any fully-grown adult. Physically, at least. 

“Okay. Sorry. Julian.” Felix held up his hands, doing his best to smile. Julian’s face stayed still and guarded. “Come in, sit down. Would you like something to drink?” Julian did come in, looking around at the Parisian street Felix had constructed a few years back. It wasn’t his best work, but it had seemed like a good place for this… occasion. Julian had said nothing. “Coffee?” Felix suggested. Julian nodded stiffly. Felix lingered awkwardly by the replicator, which seemed to appear out of thin air, for the few moments it would take for the coffee to materialize, then brought it over to a small table in front of the cafe. Music drifted out from inside, a little touch he was proud of. 

Felix settled into his chair and sipped his own coffee. Julian’s fingers worried the rim of his mug rather than bring it to his mouth. Every skinny line of him was tense on the other side of the table, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Felix couldn’t honestly say he blamed him. 

“You know, my parents would kill me if they knew I was here,” Julian said in the very posh English accent he had developed since childhood. 

“Yeah, so would mine.” 

“I’m still not sure I think it was a good idea, either,” said Julian. 

“Don’t worry,” said Felix. “I get it. I, too, learned paranoia at my parents’ knees.” 

“At least you _remember_ me, or so you claim,” said Julian. “I’m trusting you a good deal more than I probably should, here.” 

“You really don’t remember?” Felix asked curiously. Julian made a face. “Repressed it all, or…?” 

“No idea,” said Julian shortly. “Not sure I _want_ to know. Hardly going to ask. I haven’t spoken to my father in two years, and I only cave to calling my mother on holidays.” 

“Mine calls me of her own accord,” said Felix. “Impossible to avoid.” For the first time, the face Julian made was a little sympathetic. “So,” Felix went on, “Cambridge. Congratulations.” 

“Thank you,” said Julian politely. 

“I considered Cambridge,” Felix told him after a moment’s awkward silence. “Wouldn’t it have been something if we’d run into each other entirely organically?” 

“Not that I would have known.” 

“Right.” Another painful silence 

“So, your name is Felix.” 

“It was Adam,” said Felix. “It’s Felix now.” Julian shrugged, his cool mask slipping again, this time into self-effacing apology. Felix was starting to suspect he was actually quite friendly, or would be in a normal context. 

“I wouldn’t remember either way,” he said. “But you changed it.” 

“My parents did. I’m amazed yours didn’t, actually,” he added. Julian tightened up again, looking around not at all subtly as if to check for anyone who might overhear. “It’s all right. We’re in a holospace, remember?” 

“Of course I remember _that_ ,” Julian snapped. “I just…” He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, they didn’t. That’s why I did, insofar as I could while still a minor.” 

“When did you start going by Julian?” 

“When I started university. It’s more mature, and as a fourteen-year-old—you know.” 

“I see,” said Felix. That didn’t sound like all of it, but he wouldn’t probe. 

“So—you’re studying anthropology?” Julian asked. Felix nodded. 

“With a secondary concentration in developmental psychology.” 

“Fascinating,” said Julian, and it actually sounded like he meant it. “I can imagine there’s a lot of very fertile space for interplay between those two disciplines.” 

“That there is,” Felix acknowledged. 

“Are you thinking of joining Starfleet?” 

“No,” said Felix. “Don’t tell my mother, but no.” He frowned. “Are you?” 

“God, yes,” said Julian. “I'm getting as far away from this planet as possible, as soon as I possibly can. To do as much good for as many people as I possibly can, of course,” he added, with the air of belatedly adding the white lie he assumed his listener wanted to hear as if they would somehow miss, then, that his first reaction had been to come right out and tell the truth. “What are you interested in, then, anthropologically-slash-psychologically speaking?” 

“Uh,” said Felix, with all the eloquence of his enhanced brain. “You'll probably think it’s silly, but—er—are you familiar with virtual anthropology?” 

“Virtual?” Julian frowned. “How can anthropology be virtual?” 

“It refers to anthropology as applied to produce realism in the context of virtual dimensions.” Julian’s eyes narrowed. 

“So, holoprogramming,” he said, “but for geniuses,” and Felix felt a sudden rush of unbridled joy at the tiniest taste of what it was like to have someone be able to keep up with him. 

“Basically.” 

“I don't think that's silly,” said Julian. “On the contrary. What kind of programs do you work on?” 

“At present? Mostly it's just personal projects to fulfill my lifelong dream of experiencing the mid-twentieth century for myself,” Felix admitted. 

“Well, if that's your dream, why not join Starfleet?” said Julian. “You could just create a temporal anomaly and say it was an accident, and you'd get to experience it for _real._ ” Felix cringed internally at the idea of causing a dangerous accident on purpose, but on the outside he forced a laugh that sounded convincing to his ears. Julian looked pleased with himself; apparently it was convincing to other ears too. At least he was starting to open up a little. 

“Thanks, but I’m content to stay here on Earth.” Felix took a long sip of his coffee. “Doesn’t Starfleet Medical have its own school? Why go to Cambridge first?” 

“Starfleet Academy wouldn’t let me in yet.” Julian shrugged one shoulder. “Apparently fourteen was too young. So, I needed something to pass the time for a couple years.” Felix snorted an unexpected laugh, for real this time. “God!” Julian laughed, too. “It’s nice to be able to _say_ that to someone. But you understand.” 

“Naturally. Well—not _naturally._ It’s not exactly natural, the understanding, is it?” 

“No. Not at all. _Un_ natural, in fact.” Julian grinned. 

“Won’t that mean you actually enter Starfleet Academy later than average, though?” Felix pointed out. Julian was nearly seventeen, already a year older than the youngest cadets, and he still had two terms left at Cambridge before he was done. His… friend? Could he reasonably begin to call him that, again, yet? shrugged. 

“All the better to fit in, right?” 

“I suppose.” And at that, for whatever reason, neither of them could think of anything else to say, and the conversation lulled. Felix drank his coffee. 

“What do you suppose normal people talk about?” Julian asked. 

“I have no idea,” said Felix. “Uh… What’s your favorite movie?” 

“Ah, you’ll like this. Everyone else just thinks I’m a pretentious shite.” Julian smiled. “ _From Russia With Love,_ 1963.” 

“Oh, of course,” said Felix, grinning back again. “You may not realize it, but some things _haven’t_ changed.” 

  


005\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2360 

LOCATION: Palo Alto 

  


The premise—creating an artificial but believable scenario in which to “meet”, so they could be friends in an ordinary capacity without arousing even a hint of suspicion in any corner—was, of course, Felix’s idea, communicated over the triple-secured backdoor connection they had been using to talk. The venue was Julian’s, and it had taken a _lot_ to get Felix to agree. 

But agree he had, finally, and now here he was, preparing a presentation room at the Central Federation Interdisciplinary Research Conference at Stanford University. 

“‘Forks in the Developmental Road: Transplanting the Processes of Identity Formation to the Holosphere’,” Julian read from the doorway. “That sounds _fascinating._ ” 

“I’m glad someone else thinks so,” said Felix. Julian grinned. 

“How was the flight?” he asked. 

“Well, we didn’t crash, so, as good as could be expected,” said Felix. Julian rolled his eyes. 

“I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t just take a transporter.” 

“About fourteen percent of the adult population habitually avoids transporters for a wide variety of perfectly valid personal reasons ranging from religious beliefs to personal discomfort,” said Felix. 

“Yes, sure.” 

“That’s roughly one in seven—” 

“I _was_ aware of that, actually—” 

“I may be—oh, shut up, Julian. I may be unusual, but I’m hardly _unique._ ” 

“Funny, that’s been my motto since meeting you.” Julian was smiling again. Felix just shook his head. 

“How was the transporter?” 

“Instantaneous.” Julian snapped his fingers to demonstrate, and it was Felix’s turn to roll his eyes. “Very convenient. So! What do you have to tell me about identity formation in the holosphere?” 

“Well,” said Felix, “now that you _ask._ Computer, run program.” The lights faded out, and the glowing embryo appeared at the center of the room. “Every known species,” Felix began, “from Aaamazzarite to Zibalian, begins life as an embryo. That point of origin, a cluster of cells, is universal. The question is, what will those cells become?” 

“What indeed,” said Julian. 

“Shh,” said Felix. The embryo began to grow and transform, spinning slowly. Julian walked around it, rotating the opposite direction, his expression politely interested but as yet familiar—unimpressed. He would know how gestation worked as well as anyone who had completed the standard Year 6 module in humanoid reproduction. Better, in fact. 

“A Vulcan male,” Felix observed. His presentation program included seventy species, with a mean average of two and a quarter normative biological sexes each. He had elected not to worry about hybrids, not wanting to overcomplicate the exercise. Technically that meant there were 180 possibilities—closer to 300 as one moved on through the presentation, accounting for genderqueerness and anomalies like joined Trills—but to the casual observer it would seem infinite. (The Vulcan gestating in space before him would like that, he thought.) 

The options were set to manifest randomly, never repeating the same species twice in a row. Just the way Felix liked it: this setup kept him on his toes. Otherwise, he might have gotten bored. 

“For our purposes, let us assume he is cisgender,” Felix continued, and that thread lit up, connecting the fetus to the appropriate holographic module. “Like most Vulcans, he does not have a gendered sexual preference, though barring contingencies he will be expected to mate with a Vulcan with a complementary reproductive system during _pon farr._ But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

“He is born. To whom is he born?” The baby, fully formed now, began to move his limbs and opened his mouth in a silent cry. “To a teacher and a judge? A Starfleet officer and a civilian spouse? A Federation minister and a research scientist?” Felix looked at Julian expectantly until he realized he was supposed to participate now. 

“Starfleet officer,” he said quickly. Frankly, predictably. That holographic thread lit up, tracing right over Julian’s shoulder. He jumped, startled, then laughed it off. 

“Where is his parent stationed?” Felix continued. 

“Um—a starship patrolling the Cardassian border,” said Julian. “Three years into a five-year mission.” Felix nodded. 

“All right.” The program wasn’t designed to produce scenarios, but it could call up existing footage. They watched from the perspective of the bridge looking out through the viewfinder as a Galaxy-class starship was buzzed by two Galors, and listened as the red alert klaxons blared through the room. Felix felt all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He took deep, square breaths, trying to keep his heart rate normal. 

“What will life be like for a young Vulcan growing up in these specific conditions?” he said. “How will his surroundings impact the course of his development both as a part of society and on an individual level?” The baby was a child now, and still growing. More and more threads blossomed, twining around him as the program ran through possible events that would shape the young Vulcan’s psyche. “Most importantly, how will he be disposed to interact with others?” Gradually, the threads wove together to form his clothing, traditional Vulcan robes—good that they did, because as the figure rapidly approached adulthood, Felix noted, Julian’s eyes had started to wander. While that had the potential to be highly amusing, Felix _did_ still want his friend to keep paying attention to what he had to say. 

They watched the Vulcan’s body grow until he stood as tall as Julian, with broader shoulders; he grew a few centimeters more, then stopped. He opened his eyes, and when he did, a scene lit up around them: the Vulcan Science Academy. The Vulcan himself looked from Felix to Julian and back, and inclined his head politely. 

“Greetings,” he said. “I am Narok.” 

“Uh—Julian Bashir,” said Julian, extending a hand and withdrawing it just as quickly as he realized what he had done. Narok raised an eyebrow. He looked about thirty, which had he been Terran would have meant he looked about their age or a few years older. He wouldn’t be aware that Julian had just spent the last segment of his development checking him out, to compound the awkwardness of the aborted attempt at a handshake. Felix rather envied him his ignorance. 

“And I’m Felix Amaros. Computer, freeze program.” Narok stopped moving, and the scene with him. Felix turned to Julian. “As you can see, a strong underlying development mechanism, constructed on a base of anthropological and psychological research, can do half the work for the world-builder when it comes to populating a virtual space with realistic, interactive figures that can act with relative autonomy while still contributing to the thrust of a narrative.” Julian nodded. 

“Interesting thesis,” he said. “May I offer a critique?” 

“You, and only you, may,” said Felix. Julian’s mouth twisted with the flicker of an odd, private smile. 

“As an anthropologist—with such a focus on history, too—and a psychologist, I’m surprised you would pursue a theoretical line that gives such credence to the notion of inevitability,” he explained. “Aren’t our lives defined by our own choices and those of the people whose lives affect ours? We always have the freedom to choose differently. There’s no guarantee that we’ll make any one choice, let alone an exact sequence of choices spanning a lifetime. The odds are miniscule.” 

“Yes,” said Felix after a moment’s due consideration. “I mean, you’re absolutely right. But does this contradict that? As I see it, the development of the holographic character’s identity is path-dependent, not inevitable. At least, it is inevitable, in that, say, where we are right now is inevitable given the choices we’ve made and those others have made for us throughout our lives up to this very instant. The point isn’t that the course of his life is inevitable from his birth and the circumstances thereof, just that it happens a certain way, and the way it happens _inevitably_ determines what he becomes.” His own rebuttal finished, he shut his mouth quickly. Julian was looking at him in a way that made him distinctly uncomfortable—not unlike how he had been looking at the naked Vulcan, except that this was a good deal more puppyish. 

_Oh no,_ Felix thought. 

“No, you’re right,” said Julian. “You’re right. You might explain that part in full to others who stop by, is all I have to say in response.” 

“I won’t need to,” said Felix. “Like I said, I’m not taking critiques from anyone else. They can bite their tongues and write a scathing peer review later if they’re really peeved.” Julian laughed. 

“Fair enough!” He stood there for a moment, unexpectedly awkward, then reached out and clapped Felix on the shoulder. “I really ought to rejoin my research group—I’m sure they’re wondering where I am. I’ll see you later?” 

“Of course,” said Felix, and with a little wave, Julian walked off and out of the room. Felix looked at Narok. “Oh dear,” he said, and with a heavy sigh, “computer, save character.” 

“Character saved,” said the computer. Narok hadn’t moved. 

“Thanks. Reset program.” The hologram, with all his facets, blinked out of existence, leaving Felix alone in the dark presentation room. Outside, the system chimed the hour, and the conference officially began. 

Six non-contiguous hours and 91 program variants later, Felix removed the data rod from the room’s system and packed up his extraneous accessories, pausing to reach up and stretch his sore lower back. The Adigeoni hadn’t bothered to correct his all-too-human posture, or maybe he had just abused it enough of his own accord over the years to undo their work. 

“How’d it go?” And Julian was back. 

“If _I’m_ this dead on my feet, I can only imagine how normal—” Felix halted the sentence halfway through as he turned to see his friend wasn’t alone. “Hello.” 

“Hello,” said the Andorian girl who stood beside Julian. 

“This is Mala,” said Julian. “A member of my research group. Mala, this is Felix.” 

“Julian says your presentation was _fascinating,_ ” said Mala. “His word.” Felix smiled - she had somehow managed to imitate Julian’s accent even through the UT. “I’m sorry to have missed it.” 

“Perhaps you’ll encounter his work in the wild someday,” said Julian. “We should all be so fortunate.” He turned to Felix. “We’re going out for drinks, if you’d like to join.” Felix did not want to do that at all. 

“Sure,” he said anyway, and followed them, slinging his bag over his shoulder. They joined the throng of people streaming out of the conference hall into the East Pacific night, keeping close together, a small system of three within a larger galaxy of beings. 

For a few wonderful moments, it was fine. Felix walked among his peers, beside his friend, in open space, and breathed in fresh air. Then, as could be reasonably expected—however fiercely hoped against—every part of Felix’s brain reacted all at once. 

Earth was, on average, one of the safest places in the Alpha Quadrant. Crime was rare in a society without scarcity to incentivize it. Still, outliers happened every day, abnormal and dangerous events that couldn’t be predicted or prepared for. What _could_ be predicted was this: Felix’s mind, being unnaturally enhanced to produce maximal creativity, was unusually inclined towards inventing, and then simulating in all his senses, the most extreme scenarios. 

Perhaps a radical Terran religious adherent, or a member of the Tal Shiar, or a disgruntled Klingon still angry about the subjugation of his people’s honor to the Federation, had set a bomb to go off at the center of the crowd right as they walked out of the building. It could happen at any moment. Perhaps Felix, or one of his companions, had happened to fit a serial killer’s preferred pattern, and now was the moment he would choose to strike. Perhaps the government had caught him, him and his parents, him and Julian, and law enforcement agents were coming for him where he stood. 

Perhaps there would be some kind of biochemical disaster at Starfleet Medical, just 50 kilometers away, and they would all succumb in agony to the virus that would destroy Terran civilization all over again. Perhaps a satellite would fall out of orbit in such a trajectory as to bring it down right overhead, and emergency defenses wouldn’t respond fast enough to neutralize it before impact. (That one, he would admit, was improbable even relative to the other scenarios.) Perhaps this region’s centuries-overdue tectonic catastrophe would hit, destroying buildings and infrastructure and knocking out the electrical grid for miles around, all while causing liquefaction right here beneath their feet, and the earth would eat him alive. 

These things were unlikely, but they _could_ happen. Stepping outside the safety of his home, interacting with the world, increased the risk to Felix himself exponentially. It was why he generally didn’t. 

All these scenarios played out in Felix’s head en masse, in stereo, so vivid it was like he was experiencing them for real. Except they weren’t real, and when they faded he was still there, walking steadily forward through the crowd a step behind Julian and Mala. Behind his blank expression, every nerve ending and sensory input was screaming. It wasn’t real, none of it was real, of course nothing happened—he was fine; everything was normal; Julian and Mala didn’t seem to notice anything wrong—but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it. 

“Felix.” Julian’s voice broke through. “Are you all right?” Perhaps his expression wasn’t as blank as he had thought. 

“I need to get away from people,” was what Felix’s voice replied. He wasn’t sure his brain directed it: it was like his mouth just spoke for _him,_ with no conscious mediation to muddle the message. 

“All right.” To his surprise, it was that simple. Julian grabbed his arm and led him firmly perpendicular to the direction of the crowd flow. They ducked through an archway off the green and Felix sank gratefully onto a bench under a tree among the many that lined the next lawn over, pressing his hands over his eyes and waiting for his heart rate to drop. “Again, are you all right?” Julian asked. 

“Improving rapidly,” said Felix. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine. I can catch up with Mala later.” Julian settled onto the bench beside him. Felix could sense the carefully-placed centimeters of distance he left. “What happened? If you don’t mind my asking.” 

“Just a delightful quirk of my brain enhancements that the Adigeoni evidently didn’t foresee.” Felix rubbed at his eyes hard before he righted himself, blinking at Julian. “Existing in the universe with other entities is difficult, you know? They’re unpredictable. Dangerous. Why do you think I prefer holograms I can program myself?” 

“Aren’t you actively trying to make holograms more, you know—entitative?” Julian pointed out. Felix smiled grimly. 

“I would seem to have a penchant for self-sabotage.” Julian grinned at that. 

“Felix,” he said, but whatever was going to follow went unheard, as he stopped short and his tone made it clear he was switching tacks as he continued, “where are you staying?” 

“Hotel L’Andoria.” Which was an entirely Earth-based enterprise, of course. So profoundly Terran Felix could vomit. “In Santa Clara. And you’re in a hostel?” 

“Along with the rest of my research group, yes.” 

“Why do you ask?” Felix asked, a little wary. He was right to be, apparently, because Julian coughed nervously before he answered, eyes darting away. 

“I only wondered if the trip back might be a little less stressful with some company,” he said, which was probably true, albeit with some ulterior motives omitted. 

“I would appreciate not having to be alone out here,” Felix admitted. To himself he admitted he should probably preempt the issue he was by now fairly certain was bound to come up. He steeled himself. “Look, Julian—” 

Felix’s superhuman reflexes snapped up both hands to stop Julian short as, for some reason, he chose that instant to lean over and try to kiss him. Apparently Felix wasn’t the only one who was a sucker for a tense narrative that ended with a nice catharsis. This, though, wasn’t one that would do a thing for him. 

“Sorry. Oh, God. I’m sorry.” Julian sprang back, looking mortified. Felix sighed. 

“It’s all right.” 

“I thought—I thought, maybe, foolishly—well, _evidently,_ I guess—” 

“It’s really all right,” Felix told him. “It’s not about you, I promise.” 

“Oh, no, please don’t tell me you’re going to _it’s not you, it’s me_ me.” Julian groaned. Now it was his turn to hide his face in his hands. Oddly, Felix found himself struggling not to laugh. 

“It really is me, not you. Julian, you’re a good friend—sort of my only friend—and I care about you, quite a lot. I’m just not interested in—physical intimacy—in general. With anyone.” 

“All right.” Julian ran his hands up through his hair, mussing it wildly. “I am sorry, for not picking up on that.” 

“It’s really fine.” Felix patted his shoulder awkwardly. 

“I thought, you know, we both—we understand each other. Like no one else does. Can. So I thought, maybe...” 

“No, you’re right about that much,” said Felix. “And I’m over the moon to have you as my friend. I just… want it to stay platonic.” Julian nodded, looking down. There was a moment of silence. Felix wasn’t entirely sure whether it was awkward or not. It existed in some indefinite space between the two. 

“That’s such a funny colloquialism now, ‘over the moon’,” Julian mused—“it really doesn’t mean as much anymore as it used to a few hundred years ago, does it?” 

“Only if you’re the kind of dumbass who takes idioms literally,” said Felix. Julian laughed. 

“We’re all right, then?” 

“Of course we’re all right,” Felix told him, and reached out to hug him around the shoulders for good measure. He felt very young, all of a sudden, for how world-weary he was. They were both still so very, very young. “You’ve made your hair look ridiculous.” 

“Have I?” Julian grinned, but the rest of his face just looked tired. “I suppose maybe you don’t want me walking you back to your hotel room, now, do you. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s up to you,” said Felix. “I’ll feel guilty if I keep you from going out with your friends and having fun, but being out in the open is more comfortable with you around.” 

“Even though I tried to kiss you and fucked everything up.” 

“You didn’t fuck everything up.” Felix smacked his arm. “I mean, sure, maybe if I had a friend who was a Klingon, I’d choose him over you just for security purposes, but in the absence of a preferable alternative I suppose I can settle—” 

“You are _terribly_ rude. Don’t know why I sit here and take it.” But Julian’s grin brightened again. He stood, and offered Felix a completely unnecessary hand up. “Shall we?” 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also on tumblr @yrbeecharmer.


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Would you be open to helping me beta-test an idea?” Felix asked the next morning almost before Julian was in his seat. His friend looked at him suspiciously across the table outside the very real cafe in Redwood City where he had agreed to meet him.
> 
> “Did you sleep last night?” he asked. Felix rolled his eyes.
> 
> “No, but I’m fine. Answer the question?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, uh, I promise I really did write all of this well over a year ago at this point. at the time, I didn't know what the world would be like in 2020. none of the characterization had anything to do with the psychological effects of the global pandemic and quarantine. however, reading it back as I've come back to it and polished it up to finally post, parts of it have hit me a lot harder than I expected even though I'm the one who wrote it.
> 
> So, I guess this is sort of a gentle content warning for agoraphobia/anxiety about disaster and discussion of not leaving one's house/living space.

  


006\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2365 

LOCATION: San Francisco 

  


“You're quite certain you don't remember doing this as kids?” Felix asked. Julian frowned, a funny expression when his cheeks were stuffed full of popcorn. 

“Maybe?” He said when the mouthful had been swallowed. “It does come back in chunks sometimes, but only when something else draws it out when I'm not expecting it. I can't go looking for it deliberately. Do you know what I mean?” 

“I really don't,” said Felix, who had perfect recall and a mind that never repressed anything, no matter how badly he might have liked to forget certain things. Most of them, indeed, Julian-related. When he pointed this out, Julian threw a piece of popcorn at him. Felix caught it in his mouth. 

“Oh, now you're just showing off.” Julian crossed his arms over his chest and turned grumpily back to the video screen, where James Bond had just electrocuted a man in a bathtub. “Shocking,” he muttered along with Sean Connery. He glanced at Felix, meeting his eyes and startling him back to the present. “What?” 

“Just thinking,” said Felix. “You happened to be in the middle distance.” 

“Huh.” Julian turned back to the movie, and Felix returned to pondering. 

Julian had just begun the final stage of his Starfleet Academy education, having been accepted into the fast-track honors program within Starfleet Medical. Within five years at the very most (less, since it was Julian), he would ship out to—somewhere; where, none could say yet. Knowing him, probably the farthest corner of the galaxy he could reach. 

Their other friends (which was to say, Julian’s friends, some of them by now also Julian’s exes), being mostly in reds, golds, and less-rigorous blues, would be gone even sooner. And then Felix would, once again, be alone. Stuck on the home planet he was too existentially anxious to leave, with no company but his holograms, nowhere to go but a holospace... 

“Would you be open to helping me beta-test an idea?” he asked the next morning almost before Julian was in his seat. His friend looked at him suspiciously across the table outside the very real cafe in Redwood City where he had agreed to meet him. 

“Did you sleep last night?” he asked. Felix rolled his eyes. 

“No, but I’m fine. Answer the question?” 

“What _is_ the idea?” Julian asked. Felix leaned forward over the table. 

“Shared holospace,” he said. “I want to build a program that can be duplicated across a subspace connection. Piggybacking, or self-generated, I haven’t decided—whichever’s more feasible. So two people, both using the program at the same time, could spend time together, in person, virtually.” 

“It’s inherently not in person if it’s virtual,” said Julian. Felix rolled his eyes. 

“With holoprojectors it might as well be. If the connection’s stable, it should effectively be the same, at least to human perception.” 

“Us included?” Julian asked doubtfully. Felix glanced around instinctively to make sure no one was nearby, and was forcibly reminded of Julian, years younger, so nervous as to forget he was in a holospace and do the same. 

“Sure, if the connection’s tight enough. It might,” he admitted, “begin to lag just a little at a significant distance, but there’s not much I can do about that, not unless we somehow figure out how to warp photons at factor 10. It would still be only infinitesimal. I can’t guarantee we would even notice.” 

“Well.” Julian took a long sip of his americano, which had materialized. “That does sound like an interesting idea.” 

“I don’t think there would be any dangerous aspect,” said Felix. “No more than with conventional holospaces.” Julian frowned. 

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” he said. “I do wonder, though, whether it might cross some legal boundaries—or ethical ones.” 

“There would be the rub.” Felix shrugged. “I don’t see why it should, though. It’s not a fundamental break from extant communication technology—we’ve been using holoprojectors for real-time communication in three dimensions for centuries now. This would just be that, but with the luxury of a holospace to communicate in.” 

“Might be too easily manipulated,” Julian pointed out. “And I can imagine there might be certain risks to come of attaching holosuites or holodecks to subspace channels. But—sure,” he added, “let me know if you’re able to get a working beta-test up and running—I’m certainly willing to be your other guinea pig, and it should be absolutely secure as long as it’s just within the planetary network, right?” 

“Definitely,” Felix promised. Julian nodded. 

“Good,” he said. “There are some things I still don’t trust subspace with at all.” 

  


007\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2367 

LOCATION: Luna 

  


The moon wasn’t even particularly far, but it was still the first time Felix had been off Earth since his parents brought him home fifteen years ago - and it was just beginning to become worth the constant consciousness that the artificial atmospheric containment had a statistically-insignificant _but extant! still extant!_ probability of giving way at any moment. 

“Now, Mala tried very hard to keep this detail out of my carefully-crafted remarks—” Julian grinned, and tipped his champagne flute in the bride’s direction as their Andorian friend rolled her eyes so hard her antennae mimicked the motion, and the wedding guests laughed—“but since censorship is such a _cold-blooded_ impulse in this day and age—” 

“That’s racist, Julian!” Nick Toyoshima called jovially from the back of the reception hall, to laughter all around. Julian just grinned a little wider and raised his glass. 

“To the armistice,” he said, and the laughter turned, briefly, to cheers. This was, after all, a room full of Starfleet cadets who Felix imagined were very glad not to be staring down the prospect of border skirmishes with Cardassians on the other side of commencement anymore. “Well, we all came to the agreement that as a person of honor, I’m well within my rights if not, indeed, _obligated_ , for the good of the community, to point out that I hold the truly _singular_ distinction of being the only person in this room—or as far as we know, the galaxy—to have dated both the bride and groom—though not at the same time—” 

Someone, probably Toyoshima again, wolf-whistled. Mala and Brandon grinned at each other. 

“Standing before you now, all I can really say is, this iteration has definitely yielded the best possible result. Mostly, for Mala and Brandon.” The laughter at that was uproarious. Julian’s smile hit just the right note of self-deprecation before it shifted to completely genuine. “My wholehearted congratulations to you both. I’m honored to call you my friends—in fact, you might say I’m _over the moon_ —” this time it was Felix’s turn to roll his eyes, as the room collectively groaned—“and I know everyone here joins me in wishing you a long and happy life together.” 

“Aww,” said the crowd, all at once, loudly. Felix joined in the applause as Julian stepped down from the podium and Brandon and Mala kissed. 

“Okay, everybody!” Brandon’s sister Renee called, standing up to capture the room’s attention. “I think we’ve all had enough of the boring speeches—” Julian spread his hands in mock-offense, and she winked at him. “Let’s dance!” The emptied plates and other dinnerware vanished from the tables in the golden sparkle of teleportation. As everyone stood up the tables and chairs themselves began to spin down into the floor until it all latched together into a single smooth surface, and the reception hall was instantly converted to a ballroom. 

Felix had known Mala came from a powerful family on Andoria, but he hadn’t really understood until this wedding. A traditional Southern Andorian ceremony, insofar as one could hold a traditional Andorian ceremony for a dyadic interspecies marriage, and a traditional Western Terran reception, all made possible by the high-placed connections of an interstellar real-estate magnate: it had been… an experience. 

He politely turned down the Napean who offered a hand as the low beat of contemporary dance music began to echo around the room. Instead, Felix wove his way through the crowd, now in motion, to take a seat by the wall where he could sip his drink in peace and watch his friends dance. His tolerance for other beings and public spaces was starting to approach its limit. 

By Felix’s calculations, it was about an hour later that Julian, Mala, and Brandon all arrived to collapse on the sofa around and, in Mala’s case, on him, so that Felix just about vanished under a tangled pile of laughing Starfleet cadets. Mala and the cadets’ colleague Erit, a stocky and fairly butch Andorian _zhen_ , had spent the past twenty minutes attempting to teach Brandon and Julian a traditional four-part Andorian dance on the fly. It had gone either spectacularly well or spectacularly wrong—Felix couldn’t really tell. 

“Felix!” Mala exclaimed. “You’re all alone! At _my_ wedding! This simply won’t do.” 

“I’m fine,” said Felix, as Brandon shifted his legs so they crossed over his knees, preventing him from complying with Mala’s request even if he’d wanted to— 

“Come on, dance with somebody! I bet Erit would dance with you.” 

“I’m not much of a dancer,” Felix demurred. Julian laughed. 

“That he is not.” Just to box him in further, he dropped to the floor to lean back against Felix’s calves. Why did all his friends get so _tactile_ when inebriated? And this was just them tipsy—he’d had Julian tackle him to the ground before in his enthusiasm and pin him there for a few terrifying seconds with sheer inertia when he was _really_ drunk. Julian, of course, being the only one who probably could, that would, Felix still not having managed to develop any Klingon friends in the intervening years. 

“I’m glad you found your way over, actually,” Felix told them—“I had been wondering when I’d get a chance to give you this.” He contorted his arm around Mala enough that he could reach his pocket, and pulled out a data rod. He held it up. She examined it curiously. 

“Can it be?” she asked, looking at him. “A chance to finally experience your work _in the wild_ , as Julian puts it?” 

“Think of it as an extra honeymoon,” Felix told them. Brandon grinned. 

“Well, who’s going to say no to a whole nother honeymoon?” he said, a little lewdly. Mala kicked him playfully, though with how they had arranged themselves on the couch, in their state, Felix thought it was only good fortune that had kept her stiletto heel from making contact with his groin. _That_ would have been a bad way to start a marriage. 

“Where will it take us?” she asked. Their real-life honeymoon would take them to Risa—where else? Felix smiled. 

“It’s a completely constructed world,” he said. “I hope you like it.” 

“A place built just for us? I’m sure we will.” Mala set a hand on top of his head, fingers splayed; were he an Andorian, her hand would frame his antennae. It was a fraternal gesture. Returning one of his own kind, Felix hugged her. 

Another five hours later, the bride and groom having long since boarded a private shuttle bound for the spaceport—giving a whole new meaning to honeymoon, Julian had said, giggling and slurring a little, and fortunately this time Felix had been close enough to smack him—and the party only now winding down, Felix, entirely sober, found himself staggering out of the reception hall nonetheless. 

It was Julian’s fault: he was, to put it as politely as possible, shitfaced. Felix didn’t think he’d ever seen him quite this drunk. Unable to fully support himself on his own legs, he had draped not so much his arm as some one third of his torso over Felix’s shoulders and leaned on him heavily as they walked out. 

“I will get revenge on you for this,” Felix grumbled as he half-dragged, half-carried his friend down the short lane to the hostel where they were lodged. “This I vow. Unto my dying breath.” 

“Mmkay...less,” said Julian, and giggled at his own semicoherent pun. “Kahless.” His legs were moving, but Felix privately thought his very earnest attempts to walk normally were actually making him even more ineffective. At long last, they reached the hostel, and Felix bore Julian as far as the turbolift before he finally gave up supporting his weight. Julian managed to stay upright for a few seconds before he collapsed unceremoniously against the turbolift wall. Felix rolled his eyes. 

“Graceful.” 

“Shut up.” Julian sank to the floor, laying his head against the metal panels and closing his eyes. He smiled. “It tickles.” 

“The floor?” 

“Mm-hmm. Tickles my ears.” When Felix listened, he could hear the faint whirring of the mechanisms that were moving them up toward the eighteenth level. He doubted it would be audible to baseline hearing, but for the genetically enhanced he imagined it would be even louder down on Julian’s present plane. 

The turbolift chimed as they reached their floor. Felix nudged at Julian’s torso with his foot, carefully avoiding his stomach and liver—neither of those needed any more tormenting tonight. 

“Come on, get up.” 

“Ugh.” With a great effort, Julian pushed himself back up to standing, and by some miracle made it as far as the room they were sharing before he collapsed. 

Julian was supposed to take the top bunk, had been the deal; in light of Felix’s anxieties, it seemed like the better option. This was not a plan, however, that had accounted for the contingency of a _lot_ of alcohol. Now Julian curled up not in his assigned bed, but Felix’s. 

“Julian,” said Felix reproachfully. Julian made a face. “You’ve got to get up to the top bunk.” 

“I… don’t think I can,” said Julian, and he sounded genuinely remorseful as he added, “I’m sorry.” Felix sighed. 

“Great. That’s fine, I guess.” He turned to his overnight bag where he had left it on the shelves built into the wall at the other end of the bunks and began to undress methodically, replacing his clothes with pajamas piece by piece. He was always a little uncomfortable taking his clothes off in front of people, and even a very impaired Julian was no exception. 

“They got married,” said Julian suddenly. Felix looked at him. He was staring into space, curled up in a loose fetal position, looking rather forlorn. 

“Yes, they did,” Felix replied warily. “Good for them.” 

“To each other.” 

“Yes.” 

“Not to me. Of course.” 

“Come on, Julian,” said Felix, zipping his bag shut with perhaps a little more force than was warranted. “I know drunk you tends towards reversion, but you’ve been over Brandon for two years, and Mala longer than that.” 

“But what if I’m not?” Julian countered plaintively. 

“You _are,_ ” Felix said firmly. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re over both of them, and you’re very happy for them. You said so yourself - it’s the best possible outcome, you said.” 

“I _know,_ ” said Julian, a note of frustration coloring the vowels, drawn out by alcohol. “I _know,_ I know, I know, I _know,_ and it is, god, it is the _best_ outcome, out of the possibilities, it’s the _best,_ I _know_ that, but Felix, I’m all _alone._ I’m _always_ alone. Nobody can _ever_ love _me_ —” 

“Whoa, whoa.” Felix sat down on the low bunk beside Julian. “That’s not true. Just because two of your exes paired off for life doesn’t mean you’re going to be alone forever.” Julian just grinned, widely, without a trace of joy. 

“No, no, you’re right, though you’re wrong—you’re right for the wrong, the wrong reasons—‘cause it’s the other way ‘round,” he said. “It’s the headache, not the inflammation of the meninges—” 

“Yes, very clever metaphor, I get it, you’re a genius who’s going to be a doctor,” said Felix dryly. 

_“That can kill within hours if left untreated—”_

“Of course you won’t be alone forever, Julian. You’re an incorrigible flirt, and you’re always meeting new people, and they seem to like you—god only knows why, but they do—” 

“They _like_ me,” said Julian. “And they like fucking me. They don’t _love_ me. No one does. They _can’t_. I’m not a _person,_ Felix.” The grin had long since become a painful grimace, and Julian’s chest was shaking with laughter that was rapidly becoming indistinguishable from tears. “I can’t just—I can’t just _be_ a person. I don’t know how to _be_ a person. I was never allowed to learn. Everything I am is artificial—” 

“ _That’s_ not true,” Felix said forcefully, feeling the words hit close to home. Julian ignored him. 

“And either everyone sees that and then they run, or, or I do too good a job of not letting them see it but then they can see that I’m just dissembling and there’s nothing genuine there—” his speech was getting sharper, but crueler, inwardly so. “I’m not a _fucking_ person.” Felix sighed. 

“All right, Julian,” he said. “You are definitely a person, speaking as a fellow person who doesn’t spend a lot of time around real ones.” Julian just shook his head. “No. Look. We can argue about that when you’re sober. Right now, you need to lie down and stop thinking about this and get some sleep.” Julian frowned. 

“But I’m on your bed,” he pointed out—oh, _now_ he acknowledged it. “I, I’m s’posed to get up on the top—” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Felix cut him off. “I can go one night up that high. It’s fine.” Julian looked at him. 

“Even you couldn’t love me,” he remarked. “Maybe you would’ve been the only person who could, but you couldn’t. And that’s different, I know that’s different, I know it’s a separate _thing,_ but—I’m alone, Felix.” Felix stood and stepped back. 

“Go to sleep, Julian,” was all he had to say to that. “We’ll talk again when you’re sober.” He climbed two rungs and swung himself up the rest of the way into the top bunk, and waited until he heard Julian flop back onto the lower before he said, “computer, dim lights.” 

“Humans _need_ love,” he heard Julian whisper before he fell, finally, asleep. “But it’s not like I _am_ human, I suppose.” 

  


008\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2369 

LOCATION: Palo Alto 

  


Felix walked around the apartment, PADD in hand, grateful for the access to subquantum compiling his fellowship granted him. He was not, perhaps, technically _supposed_ to be using it for personal projects, but he figured if anyone caught him—which they wouldn’t, anyway—he could likely make the argument pretty effectively that research not for presentation was still productive in that any progress he made here would no doubt end up relevant in his ongoing fellowship research. 

So far he had worked out how to jerry-rig his own systems to use it to let him update his environs in real time. Next, he would see if the same could work on figures—but those would come after the holospace was filled in. 

The computer alerted him to a subspace transmission, and he accepted it. The screen appeared in the middle of what was, presently, the front window of the apartment. 

“Wow,” said Julian from the other end of Felix’s several-dozen-times-back-routed, semi-legal-at-best subspace link, “you really do have a new place.” 

“Oh, ignore this.” Felix waved a dismissive hand around. “It’s not even half-finished.” 

“What is it?” Julian asked. “It doesn’t look terribly contemporary.” 

“It isn’t. A luxury apartment circa 1964. A personal project, as you might imagine.” 

“As I might.” Julian grinned. “So! How’s Stanford?” 

“Fine.” Felix shrugged. “Great resource access for fellows, I’m enjoying that much. How’s deep space?” 

“Incredible!” Julian’s grin brightened. “I like my colleagues a lot, it’s been a good work environment so far, I think I should have ample opportunities for research to balance the daily practice, you know—and obviously, if it wasn’t an amazing opportunity to begin with, I’m sure you heard about the wormhole—” 

“Well, sure, it was all over the news everywhere from here to Kronos, I imagine,” said Felix. “A couple of the other fellows found out I have a friend on the station, and I suddenly found myself very popular.” 

“How trying that must have been for you,” said Julian, half-dry and half completely understanding. 

“I’m sure you’re making new friends left and right, of course,” Felix remarked. Julian shrugged. 

“Yes and no.” He held up a hand to count off on his fingers, a habit Felix supposed he must have retained in an attempt to look more normal—or perhaps it genuinely never had been entirely removed. “It’s still not a full crew, you know, and I’m at the younger end for certain. Technically I’m closer in age to my CO’s son than to the Commander himself.” Felix snorted. “I do have a few peers my own age, but one is the Bajoran liaison officer and—well, she’s… not particularly friendly to the Federation. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly, anyway, and she’s evidently decided I am one.” 

“Where ever could she have gotten that impression?” said Felix. All the fingers on the hand Julian held up dropped briefly, except for the first two. 

“And the other…” His face slipped into the dreamy, wide-eyed look Brandon had once aptly described as “hapless newborn beagle”. Oh dear. “Well, she’s a joined Trill, so really she’s about three _hundred_ years older than me, but she certainly doesn’t look it.” Felix groaned. 

“Oh, god. You _would_ have found someone to become irrationally obsessed with—” 

“You say irrational obsession, everyone else in the galaxy says _crush_ —” 

“—within a week of arriving on a space station transitioning out of fascist occupation. And everyone else in the galaxy definitely doesn’t, there’s way too much variation in how cultures approach romance for your understanding of a crush to be universal.” 

“You know, the Cardassians don’t consider themselves fascists,” Julian corrected, ignoring the second part completely—“totalitarian, perhaps, but not fascist. So I’m told.” Felix blinked. 

“By _whom_? Last I checked they were fascists by all standard definitions of the word.” 

“Well, the Cardassian spy on the station says ‘fascist’ is a pejorative Terran term that can’t accurately identify the nature of—” 

_“There’s a_ Cardassian spy _on the station?”_

“Yes, there is, he’s ostensibly a tailor, but I’m absolutely _certain_ he’s actually a spy.” Remarkably, though at the same time unsurprisingly, Julian looked even more excited about that than he had about his new crush. 

“Don’t you think a Cardassian spy might be a little biased as to the nature of his own government’s occupation?” Felix pointed out. “Every political commentator I’ve read or talked to has said the occupation, and the Cardassian system in general, is textbook fascism. One of the _features_ of fascism is that it takes on a slightly different form in any culture where it develops.” 

“And I don’t disagree,” said Julian—“in fact, in truth I don’t know that I know enough about the nuances of authoritarianism to have any standing to argue.” 

“Nice to hear you admit it for once.” 

“I just wouldn’t say any of that to the Cardassians—oh, fuck you, but anyway. They’re quite chauvinistic, and last I heard very good at killing people and making it look like natural causes.” 

“Sounds like twenty-first-century Russian authoritarianism to me.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

“Why is the spy even there?” Felix asked. “I thought all the Cardassians were supposed to have evacuated, by force if necessary?” Julian shrugged. 

“Well, I’ve _heard_ he was exiled, but I’ve also heard that’s probably just a cover story to allow him to stay. It’s not like the Federation can easily challenge that status, anyway—not when we’re trying to avoid diplomatic incidents.” 

“Fascinating.” The light flicker from the incandescent bulbs was a little off, Felix had started to notice. He scrolled through his code and adjusted the settings. “Have you heard from Mala lately?” 

“She’s on the _Exeter_ ,” said Julian. “Five-year assignment. Brandon too—oh, excuse me, Lieutenant Markey. He just got promoted. Mala’s applying for a Stamets Fellowship to study lichen growth in non-oxygenic atmospheres.” 

“Well, that’s exciting.” Felix hadn’t heard from either of them in a while, himself. He didn’t mind too much—few of his friends were ever really _his_ friends, more Julian’s friends who befriended him briefly by proxy—but had been a little sorry to lose regular contact. 

“Yeah.” Julian smiled. “She said I should apply for a Culber Grant, and we could match.” 

“Are you going to do it?” 

“Maybe.” Julian’s cheery expression faded a little more serious. “I do want to wait, I think, and see what kind of puzzles show up as we start working in the Gamma Quadrant. I wouldn’t want to box myself into studying something anyone could work on back here before I have a chance to see what’s out there.” 

“That’s fair.” The scent of the orchids in the window was too strong, but then that could have just been Felix’s senses. He would have to get a baseline Terran in here to beta-test, he thought—but then, who else was this space even intended for but, eventually, Julian? There was nothing wrong with calibrating to his own sensory input. 

“You seem a little distracted, Felix. Did I catch you in a moment of intense concentration?” Julian asked, and Felix snapped back up from his PADD. He had barely even realized he checked out of the conversation. 

“You did.” He smiled apologetically. “Sorry.” 

“It’s all right,” said Julian. Felix set down the PADD entirely. 

“There, you have my undivided attention. Tell me, how is it, living in space?” 

“It’s definitely a change,” said Julian, shifting in his chair. “I understand what the Starfleet psychologists talk about, now—there’s a certain unpleasant _something_ about living in a contained, climate-controlled environment without even an outside to go to if I wanted to.” 

“Claustrophobia?” Felix suggested. Julian shook his head. 

“No, that’s not quite it. In all honesty, I’m not sure a word for it exists in any Terran language—we’re too recently a spacefaring species.” 

“I don’t know, surely German’s Frankensteined something together by now.” 

“That does seem likely, now you mention it.” Julian frowned. “Perhaps I ought to look to the Bajoran language—they’ve been exploring space for millennia. Actual _millennia,_ Felix.” 

“But on balance?” 

“Oh, of course on balance it’s wonderful. Besides, I’m sure I’ll get used to it before long. The opportunity is very much worth a little temporary discomfort.” Julian glanced at something out of the frame. “Speaking of opportunities, I probably ought to sign off and let you get back to your work—I do need to grab lunch before my shift.” 

“Sure. We’ll catch up more another time.” 

“When there’s more to catch up on, perhaps,” said Julian. “Every day is more exciting than the last.” 

“I’m glad you’re keeping entertained.” Felix saluted. “Lieutenant Junior-Grade Doctor Bashir.” Julian rolled his eyes. 

“Right. Until later, Felix.” 

“Bye.” Felix looked back at his PADD as the screen flickered out and became the window again. The view was astonishing from this high up, but that part needed no more tweaking. It was the inside of the space—the little details that would make it feel real. The mirror, made reflective at the same consistency as would fit with the time; the flowers in the vase on the sideboard; the vintage lines of the furniture. 

Felix didn't go outside as much as he used to. He couldn't. At first he had justified it to himself as just a consequence of spending more time than ever working on his research, having the access he had now to resources that made his work more efficient _and_ higher quality at the same time, and that work being necessarily an indoor activity—but even Felix’s mind couldn't trick itself. It was too smart. He knew this was a backslide, and perhaps even more than that: the natural progression of his anxiety as it blossomed, increasingly, into agoraphobia, at the same time that all his friends were light-years away, floating in the deathly vacuum of space. 

His programs, then, were growing to be a way Felix could stay connected to his loved ones. Despite never going outside. Despite not being able to see them even if he would. They were almost a language unto themselves. 

So, increasingly Felix found himself tailoring his holospaces to the other people in his life—a series of Bond-appropriate settings for Julian, though his full plans for this project were a ways out from completion still; a series of fairy tales for Brandon and Mala’s two-year-old; a twentieth-century science fiction world for his sister. As much as he built everything for himself, to hone his abilities and suit his sensibilities (at least as much as was necessary to make them tolerable), he hadn't really built anything _for himself_ in years. He didn't need a way to stay connected to himself when himself was the one person he couldn't avoid, the one thing he couldn't escape. 

“Computer, save changes.” 

“Changes saved.” 

“Good.” Felix sighed. “End this program and run program Bedroom B.” When he moved in here he hadn’t bothered acquiring physical furniture. All he needed was the replicator, and his holoprojector nodes to be positioned right. 

He was really, ultimately, he thought as he tucked himself into bed, very low-maintenance. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline cheat sheet:  
> 007: The armistice in the Federation-Cardassian War was negotiated in 2367, per TNG 4x12, _The Wounded._  
>  008: Set around DS9 1x04, _A Man Alone._
> 
> Still on tumblr @yrbeecharmer.


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So you’re Felix!” said Jadzia. “Julian talks about you a lot.”
> 
> “Statistically speaking one will have to talk in detail about pretty much _everything_ at some point when one talks as much as Julian does in general,” said Felix. Jadzia laughed.
> 
> “Truer words.” She looked at Julian. “I like him already.”
> 
> “Yes, I rather expected you two would get along like my worst nightmare,” said Julian cheerfully, apparently unbothered by their having gone directly to mocking him. “Shall we go to lunch?”

  


009\. 

TERRAN YEAR: 2371 

LOCATION: San Francisco 

  


Felix balled his gloved hands into tight fists in his jacket pockets and kept walking, head down. In the eight months since he had last left his apartment, the crowds seemed to have gotten denser and louder, and the streets felt less safe. _Chicken and egg,_ he reminded himself, though it did very little good. 

When the agoraphobia had really set back in, the university had required him to document that he was seeking treatment in order to get accommodations. So far all his forgeries had worked, so that was fine—but right now, he almost regretted not complying for real. Consciously, of course, he knew that for all practical purposes he _couldn’t_ , but god, a part of him thought, _if only._

For today, though, he would function. He had an incentive! Terrans were social creatures, after all, and though Felix wasn’t at all representative, his underlying structure was of course still Terran—and so, though introverted by nature, he did always function better when he had a social element to his real, physical life. 

“Felix!” And there he was. As he had barely seen anyone in person during these eight months, nor had Felix been embraced by a real physical being in a very long time—so, Julian pouncing on him excitedly was a little overwhelming, and the best he could manage was to awkwardly pat his friend’s back. “Are _you_ a sight for sore eyes!” said Julian, beaming. Felix forced himself to relax and managed to smile back. 

“I could say the same,” he said. “Is it good to be home?” 

“God, _is it. _You have no idea.” Julian stepped back, finally, so Felix could be introduced to the woman with him. “Felix, this is my colleague and dear friend Jadzia Dax. Jadzia, my equally dear friend Felix Amaros.” They were both in civilian clothes, Julian in a purple sweater, Jadzia in a dark red tunic and a jacket that surely couldn’t be _actual_ Terran vintage leather. __

__“So you’re Felix!” said Jadzia. Felix could understand why Julian, or indeed most any Terran attracted to women, would have fallen for her at one time: he had rarely seen a non-Terran who more perfectly complied with traditionally dominant Terran beauty standards. “Julian talks about you a lot.”_ _

__“Statistically speaking one will have to talk in detail about pretty much _everything_ at some point when one talks as much as Julian does in general,” said Felix. Jadzia laughed. _ _

__“Truer words.” She looked at Julian. “I like him already.”_ _

__“Yes, I rather expected you two would get along like my worst nightmare,” said Julian cheerfully, apparently unbothered by their having gone directly to mocking him. “Shall we go to lunch?”_ _

__“Please,” said Felix, who wasn’t unusually hungry but would certainly prefer to be somewhere inside, away from the crowds, more protected. Julian led on, and Felix and Jadzia followed._ _

__“Now _this_ is the San Francisco I know and love,” Jadzia remarked, Felix thought mostly to Julian. “I didn’t know how much I missed the fog.” _ _

__“Weather, in general,” said Julian. To Felix, “not that we don’t get plenty of variety on away missions, but it’s so different experiencing weather here, you know, on a psychological level.” Felix nodded, inferring enough to understand. He enjoyed that about being around Julian—their brains both worked so quickly that they only had to say about half of what they were talking about out loud, and thought would fill in the rest._ _

__“Oh, definitely,” said Jadzia, who was not quite on the same wavelength. “If I were on, say, one of the moons of Bajor, and it was foggy like this, all I would know was that it was foggy. Here, though, it helps me position myself in the context of the planet’s seasons and the regional weather patterns, since I’m familiar with them, having lived here before.”_ _

__“It contributes to a sense of place,” Felix suggested. Jadzia nodded._ _

__“Yes, exactly!”_ _

__“I suppose it must be pretty disorienting, living in space,” he said._ _

__“Yes. But it’s a life we chose.” Jadzia shrugged._ _

__“Easy for you to say when you’ve had many lives,” Julian remarked. “And may continue to have many more.”_ _

__“Yet you chose it too,” Felix pointed out. Julian shrugged._ _

__“Touché.” They ducked into a bistro Felix recognized as one Julian had frequented during his time at Starfleet Academy. A server in their late teens or early twenties directed them to a booth in the corner. Looking at them, Felix realized he was beginning to feel old._ _

__“Ah, they serve raktajino here.” Jadzia, perusing the menu as she slid into the booth, looked relieved. “Thank goodness. Earth is becoming more civilized.”_ _

__“I could use a pick-me-up,” Julian agreed, sitting beside her. Felix was rather grateful to have the other side of the booth all to himself._ _

__“Since when do you drink Klingon coffee?” Felix asked, bemused. Julian gestured towards Jadzia with a thumb._ _

__“Her influence. And the influence of living abroad in general—sometimes I’m amazed by how much my own palate has expanded. Klingon coffee, Tarkalean tea...”_ _

__“I think when it comes to your _palate_ in general it’s less my influence than Mr. Garak’s,” said Jadzia in a gently pointed, knowing tone. If looks could kill, the Dax symbiont might have found itself badly in need of a new host about then. _ _

__“You know,” said Julian, obviously changing the subject. Jadzia smiled indulgently, and Felix decided he could follow her lead in letting him. “Felix may be the most creative person I’ve ever met. He can design any alien holospace your heart desires, and some that don’t exist and never have in known reality to begin with—but he almost never leaves Earth himself.”_ _

__“It’s true,” Felix acknowledged when Jadzia looked at him. “The last time I was off-world was for some friends’ wedding seven years ago.”_ _

__“And even then it was only as far as the moon,” Julian pointed out. “He even avoids transporters.”_ _

__“Well, really, Julian,” said Jadzia, “after the week we’ve had, you have to admit you can see now why some people don’t like those.” Julian shot her a dark look._ _

__“Why, what happened?” Felix asked._ _

__“Oh, nothing,” said Jadzia airily. Julian mouthed, _classified._ Ah. Based on experience, that put the odds at about 44% that Felix would be able to wrangle it out of him later—so, more likely not, but close enough to even that he’d probably still try. _ _

__“Well, I’ll have you know I am completely normal,” Felix asserted—Julian snorted most ungracefully—“over sixty percent of the adult Terran population leaves the planet less than once a year. Forty percent, less than once a decade. _You_ two are the outliers, really. You just forget, because you spend all your time around other outliers.” _ _

__“Fair enough!” Jadzia laughed. “I was going to say perhaps you just have a classically artistic disposition. In my experience, great creative and intellectual minds nearly always come with any number of contrary, even seemingly self-contradictory features.”_ _

__“Your very _long_ experience,” Julian pointed out, raising his eyebrows at Felix. _ _

__“Yes.” Jadzia smiled. “You know, Tobin—my second host,” she added, evidently for Felix’s benefit—“was a brilliant starship engineer, but terrified of space travel.”_ _

__“Really!” said Julian._ _

__“Really,” Jadzia affirmed. “He was… an existentially anxious man.” That, Felix could relate to. “But, he forced himself to go out into space anyway. For the good of scientific progress and interplanetary diplomacy—and, of course, for the benefit of the symbiont.”_ _

__“ _Everything_ for the benefit of the symbiont,” Julian remarked. _ _

__“You know, I’ve always been very curious about joined Trills,” Felix said. “As an anthropologist, it can be hard to conduct research in certain areas without leaving the planet.”_ _

__“I imagine it would be,” said Jadzia. “Well, I'm comfortable answering any questions you might have. I do have eight lifetimes to draw on.”_ _

__“Thank you!” said Felix. “That’s very generous. Let me just go through some old notes—” he pulled out his PADD and accessed his central files, taking care not to speed through the process fast enough to give himself away. Jadzia might be used to Julian, but on the other hand Julian was always better at mimicking normalcy than Felix was—a difference he suspected, as a developmental psychologist, might actually be rooted in their pre-augmentation neurology. In retrospect, Felix suspected little Jules had been on the autism spectrum (it was unclear whether that was no longer true of Julian after the genetic engineering, or if it was just expressed differently—Felix usually thought the latter), while he thought he himself had probably been, aside from perhaps a predisposition for anxiety, more or less neurotypical. Little Jules may already have been used to social emulation and mimicry, attuned to norms and behaviors that could be imitated for the sake of fitting in, while little Adam didn’t have to work at it so much and so never learned to._ _

__At any rate, Julian compensated better in baseline company, which was probably why he now lived in space at the epicenter of all the galaxy’s excitement and Felix lived in a studio apartment he never left._ _

__Except for right now, which, he was realizing, didn’t feel as painful anymore now that he was among friends as it had on the way here._ _

__  
_ _

__010._ _

__TERRAN YEAR: 2371_ _

__LOCATION: Seattle_ _

__  
_ _

__The computer chirped to let Felix know he had an incoming transmission while his entire upper body was inside a duct. He was not, perhaps, technically supposed to be inside the wiring duct of this guest housing unit at Cascadia University, but the sonic shower was being jolty and he’d rather try to fix it himself than have to deal with a stranger coming into a space he was only barely used to anyway._ _

__“Accept transmission!” he called._ _

__“I’m sorry,” said the computer, “I couldn’t understand that.”_ _

__“God damn it.” Felix craned his neck back so his voice could travel out of the duct, not into it, and repeated, “accept transmission!”_ _

__“Well hello, Felix’s arse,” said Julian’s voice._ _

__“For fuck’s sake, Julian.” Felix pulled his shoulders out of the duct and hopped down from his step-stool._ _

__“What? It's a hell of a view.”_ _

__“Happy late birthday to you, I guess.” Julian had turned thirty a few months ago, but this was the first time they had spoken since—they had both been busy._ _

__“I guess.” Julian’s face went through a number of interesting and incomprehensible microexpressions in the space of a second or two before he settled on a self-deprecating smile._ _

__“I do have a real present for you,” Felix told him. “I’ve been waiting to transmit the data until I could see your reaction.” Julian raised his eyebrows._ _

__“Oh?”_ _

__“I’ll send it now. It is a lot of data, I’ll warn you, even at subspace speeds it may take a minute to download, and you’ll want to transfer it to a datarod.” He fiddled around with his personal drive on the next screen over until he found the compressed file he needed, then copied it to the transmission._ _

__“What is it?” Julian asked, eyes below the screen, presumably on the loading bar._ _

__“I’m not telling you,” said Felix, “it’s a surprise.”_ _

__“Not for much longer it’s not!”_ _

__“Exactly.” Felix wove his fingers together and rested his chin on them, watching and waiting._ _

__“Loading, loading… loaded!” Felix could hear Julian’s fingers tapping off to the side of the screen, then he watched his friend’s face light up as he read through the files. “Felix, this isn't… you didn't…”_ _

__Felix just grinned. “Happy birthday.”_ _

__“‘Julian Bashir, Secret Agent’? Really?”_ _

__“Are you complaining?”_ _

__“No.” Julian shook his head and laughed. “God, no. _Thank_ you, Felix.” _ _

__“Hey, if I’m not abusing fellowship resources to help my only friend fulfill a childhood fantasy, what’s the point?” Felix meant it as a joke, but Julian frowned._ _

__“Surely I'm not your _only_ friend,” he said. Felix shrugged. _ _

__“Well, I suppose I have my colleagues,” he said. “When I see them.” That was met with an uncomfortable silence, as they had almost immediately hit on a topic which Felix really hadn’t wanted to reach so quickly._ _

__“Felix,” Julian said warily, “I was wondering, have you ever considered—I don’t know, seeking some support for the agoraphobia? It’s just, it seems like it’s gotten worse since I left Earth.”_ _

__“Oh, it definitely has,” said Felix. “I do better when I have friends around to interact with who can counterbalance my anxiety. But you don’t have to feel responsible for me,” he added quickly, seeing Julian’s eyebrows move towards each other, “and you shouldn’t—I’m an adult and responsible for myself.” Julian still looked concerned, so he went on, “it’s not a big deal. Technology more than allows me to compensate.”_ _

__“But you shouldn’t _have_ to compensate,” Julian argued. “There must be some way to treat it.” Felix shrugged. _ _

__“I don’t do doctors,” he said, without thinking before he spoke. Julian’s face lit up, twisting into a fondly mocking smirk._ _

__“You know, I _was_ aware—” Yeah, he walked into that one. _ _

__“You know what I meant, Julian.” Felix glared at his friend, equally fondly, until he sobered. “Pursuing treatment would mean seeing either a psychologist or a psychiatrist. You know that. The latter would definitely figure out what was done to me in preliminary tests, and the former—well, there’s not a shrink in the Federation who could _actually_ help me in any productive way. _Maybe_ there’s some medication somewhere that someone could prescribe me, but that would mean going to see a doctor in the first place, and I’m not going to do that. And,” he added quickly, seeing Julian’s eyebrows furrow again and the gears begin to turn, “ _you_ obviously can’t do that, because it would _violate_ the _ethics_ you’re _required to uphold_ in order to _keep your medical license._ ” He put a heavy emphasis on that last, hoping to drive it into Julian’s head before any other idea could take hold. His efforts did not appear to be working. _ _

__“I don’t know that it—” Julian started to say. Felix shook his head._ _

__“No.”_ _

__“We’re good at forging things, at keeping secrets—”_ _

__“No, Julian. I would never ask you to risk your career for me. There’s enough risk already for both of us just in talking about this at all.” His chest was tight, and the words were coming out too loud and too fierce. From the look on Julian’s face, though, it seemed the message might actually be getting through._ _

__“I suppose,” he said slowly, reluctantly. Felix tried to calm himself, and smiled in a way he hoped was encouraging._ _

__“I’m out of the house right now, aren’t I? Hell, I’m in another city.”_ _

__“But that’s not exactly usual, is it?” said Julian. “Had you left the house since the last time I saw you, months ago?”_ _

__“Well, no,” said Felix. “But nor have I _really_ needed to.” _ _

__“All right, well.” Julian sighed. “I suppose you know best how to manage yourself.”_ _

__“Haven’t failed so far. So other than turning thirty, what’s going on in your life?” Felix asked, seizing on the opportunity to change the subject._ _

__Julian hummed, thinking. “Not a lot. I'm not seeing anyone currently, so there's not much to talk about outside of work, which has been… not terribly out of the ordinary since last we spoke, I’m afraid.”_ _

__“Isn’t that a good thing, really?” When out of the ordinary meant terrorist cells and shapeshifters and time travel mishaps and sometimes clones._ _

__“Well, yes, it is.” Now Felix watched a light go on in his head—“Oh! You know Jadzia now, I suppose it’s news to tell you her zhian’tara is this week.”_ _

__“Ooh,” said Felix. “Are you important enough to be a participant?” Julian smiled._ _

__“Yes,” he said, “I'm excited. I'll let you know how it goes,” then, “oh, _God,_ I just remembered. I’d nearly put it out of my head until now.” That was either a highly suspect claim, given how their brains worked, or the experience he was about to relate was unusually traumatic. “Felix, do you remember Elizabeth Lense?” Felix snorted, and only felt a little bad when Julian looked at him reproachfully. _ _

__“Forget Elizabeth Lense?” he said. “What kind of Watson would I be if I forgot your Irene Adler?”_ _

__“I am not Holmes!” Julian said indignantly. “I refuse to be Holmes. I'm not a detective, _I’m_ a doctor! And, and, I don't hate people! And _I'm_ not addicted to opiates!” Weird emphasis on the _I’m_ , Felix thought, but okay. _ _

__“And she's still your Irene Adler, but go on.” He beckoned. “What about Elizabeth Lense?”_ _

__“Oh, I ran into her.” Julian groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “She came to the station. I _talked_ to her, and you know the worst part?” _ _

__“She didn't remember you?” Felix said, enunciating it like a question but knowing it was the answer just from the look on Julian’s face. His head fell off the screen entirely, thudding lightly as his forehead must have hit the desk somewhere beneath the camera’s sightline, and his voice was muffled as he said, forlornly,_ _

__“She thought I was Erit.”_ _

__“She thought you were _Erit?_ ” That would be highly amusing if Julian weren't clearly so upset. Even so, it was still pretty funny. _ _

__“Well, more like she thought Erit was me.”_ _

__“You're not the same species. You're not the same gender. You're not even from species that _have_ one-to-one mappable normative genders.” _ _

__“I know, but apparently we were standing near each other at a party, or something, and someone pointed, and she mistook.” Julian sighed, head reappearing on the screen. “It doesn't matter, anyway. She beat me, and we’ve both had great careers anyway, and that’s that. So it doesn't matter.”_ _

__“It doesn’t,” Felix agreed as a door chime buzzed. It took him a second to realize it was on his end, not Julian’s. “Hang on.” He went to the door. “Yes?”_ _

__“Hey, Dr. Amaros!” said Dr. Kalysha Brachen. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see her, probably; she was the one person on this conference trip who seemed particularly interested in befriending the others. “A bunch of us are going to go get lunch at this historic market Dr. Conrad wants to see, if you’d like to join.” Her eyes darted over his shoulder and landed on the open video screen. “Unless you’re busy, of course! No pressure.”_ _

__“Thanks,” said Felix. “That’s all right. You guys have fun. Maybe another time.”_ _

__“Sure!” said Dr. Brachen brightly. Felix turned back to the screen. Julian’s face had fallen back into that look of concern._ _

__“I wouldn’t have gone out now anyway,” Felix told him. “Not when I’m in the middle of wishing a happy belated birthday to my dear friend who lives in literal deep space and is kindly choosing to use his free time to talk to me.”_ _

__“Right,” said Julian. “I suppose that’d be rude.”_ _

__“Exactly.” They just looked at each other for a moment._ _

__“I wouldn’t have minded,” said Julian. “I would rather you go out, even.” Felix sighed._ _

__“I know.”_ _

__“You’re _sure_ you don’t want me to look into treatments?” Julian asked. Felix shook his head. _ _

__“It’s a hard no, Julian. I won’t change my mind, so please don’t offer again.”_ _

__Julian, to his credit, knowing the depth of his impulse control (very shallow) as Felix did, never did bring it up again._ _

__  
_ _

__011._ _

__TERRAN YEAR: 2372_ _

__LOCATION: Palo Alto_ _

__  
_ _

__“So,” said Felix, crossing his arms and leaning forward on his desk. “That’s the guy, huh.”_ _

__“What?” said Julian, who looked visibly exhausted. Felix wondered how long he had been on shift._ _

__“You know, the _guy._ ” _ _

__“What _guy_?” _ _

__“Ooh, is there more than one? Julian, you dog.”_ _

__“You’re going to have to be a little clearer,” said Julian. “I have no idea who you’re talking about—I’m dating a woman at the moment, actually—and now I’m also wondering if you’re spying on me, though I suppose I _could_ just be growing paranoid in my old age.” _ _

__“Oh, come _on,_ ” said Felix. “You know I do routine checkups on all my programs, make sure they’re running correctly. That includes _Julian Bashir, Secret Agent._ ” _ _

__“Oh, god,” said Julian, his eyes widening. His head dropped into his hands. “I’m so sorry about that. It was an emergency, there was a transporter malfunction—”_ _

__“You see why I don’t use those?”_ _

__“In over ninety-nine percent of all instances they’re perfectly safe—”_ _

__“Yes, well, call me when it’s over ninety nine point nine,” said Felix, pointlessly. They had had this conversation over and over; neither of them ever changed his position. “Anyway, don’t worry about the _program,_ you didn’t do any lasting damage. Just the opposite: what you did do was push the character extrapolation subroutines to extremes even I hadn’t considered, and I suspect that data will be useful.” _ _

__“Well, in that case,” said Julian, “you’re quite welcome.” He seemed relieved to have had the subject diverted. As if Felix was going to let him off that easy._ _

__“But what I was _asking_ about was your—friend? The Cardassian spy.” If Julian had been drinking coffee, which for once he regrettably wasn’t, Felix thought he probably would have witnessed the funniest spit-take of all time. _ _

__“ _Garak_?” _ _

__“Yes! I knew you were friends, but you never told me that was—you know—a _thing._ ” _ _

__“Oh, he’s not—it’s not—” But Julian stopped protesting, and instead slumped forward and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids for a second. “You know, I’ve known him for four years and I still haven’t the faintest idea _what_ it is.” _ _

__“But you admit it’s something.”_ _

__“Possibly? Probably. Maybe? Again, I _am_ dating someone at the moment, who is decidedly _not_ him, but—well, it’s nothing serious or long-term—and—” he visibly fumbled for something more cogent to say on the subject, and just as visibly failed—“yeah. I have no idea.” _ _

__“The Adigeoni really should have put a little more effort into your social skills,” said Felix. Julian just groaned, and Felix, a perfectly self-aware hypocrite, laughed. “For what it’s worth, based on the data log, I think what _it_ is, is he’s crazy about you,” he said. “It’s odd, though. He thinks you’re so different from how you actually are. I suppose it’s because he doesn’t know?” _ _

__“Doesn’t know wha—Oh. Doesn’t know _that._ ” Julian sighed. “No, he doesn’t. I mean, I think. There’s really no way to be _absolutely_ certain.” He sounded a little rueful, but fondly so. It wasn’t all the Cardassian spy, though that much had been clear from Julian’s face already, to someone who knew him as well as Felix did. _ _

__“He _must_ not—he said you’re not a man who keeps secrets.” Felix laughed at the very notion. “ _You._ A man without _secrets._ ” _ _

__“Yes, thank you, Felix, you have most thoroughly impressed upon me the irony that was never actually lost to begin with.” Julian sighed, all his characteristic good cheer vanished. That seemed to happen faster and faster every time Felix talked to him. Felix wasn’t sure he actually did like to think it wasn’t him, because that would have meant it was something else to worry about Julian for._ _

__“You’ve taken a sour turn.” Felix frowned too. Julian sighed again, more heavily._ _

__“It’s not like it matters, does it,” he said quietly, though it came through clearly, especially to Felix’s hearing. “There’s nothing _in_ a—in an _anything_ , that rests on a bedrock of secrets, right? There’s a reason you’re the only friend I’ve kept longer than a few years so far—you’re the only person I’m not keeping this huge, universe-altering secret from.” _ _

__“Yeah,” said Felix, unable to come up with anything reassuring to say._ _

__“So. It doesn’t matter.” Julian pursed his lips. “Besides, to call _him_ guileful would be an understatement in the extreme. I don’t think I really believe anything he says, certainly not _fully._ ” He sighed yet more, and straightened up, lacing his fingers together and stretching out his arms in front of him. Felix could hear his back crack faintly even through the subspace. “Let’s not talk about my life anymore, it’s no fun. How are you, Felix? Gone anywhere interesting lately?” _ _

__“Reifon Six,” said Felix. “Fascinating topography.”_ _

__“Mm-hmm.” Julian leaned his head on a hand, looking into the monitor—well, at Felix—with a look of affectionate concern. “Anywhere outside your flat?”_ _

__“Going outside is so pointless when I can go anywhere I want in an instant, don’t you think?” said Felix, not wanting to talk about this at all. Julian’s eyebrows shifted inward by a faint couple of millimeters. “Don’t worry about me,” Felix insisted. “I’m doing fine. And there’s another conference coming up in February—I’ll go outside for that. I’m going to get to present the holosphere research, finally.”_ _

__“Good,” said Julian firmly. “I’m glad to hear it, and I’ll look forward to hearing all about it.” That last was swallowed in a yawn. “Felix, you know I’m always glad to talk to you, but I did just get off an eighteen-hour shift—”_ _

__“Yes, you should get some sleep,” Felix agreed. “We’ll talk more another time.” Julian smiled thinly._ _

__“Yes.” He gave a tired little wave. “See you later.”_ _

__“Goodbye.” Felix waited for Julian to cut off the transmission, then skated back in his chair a few centimeters and leaned back so it tilted and he could close his eyes and feel the space around him. “Computer,” he said, “Betazed. Keep the chair.”_ _

__When he opened his eyes again, the chair was out-of-place on the banks of a bubbling brook, and with the Betazoid sun smiling down on him through the faintly violet atmosphere and the leaves of the julês trees whose roots strengthened the bank, Felix could almost pretend it was real._ _

__  
_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline cheat sheet:  
> 009: Set immediately after DS9 3x11-12, _Past Tense._  
>  010: Set around DS9 3x23, _Family Business._ Julian turned 30 in DS9 3x18, _Distant Voices;_ Elisabeth Lense was on the station in DS9 3x22, _Explorers,_ and not a lot that directly involved Julian actually happened between those.  
> 011: Set immediately after DS9 4x10, _Our Man Bashir_ (obviously).
> 
> Still on tumblr @yrbeecharmer.


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